


the entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell (unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time)

by wiccaning



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gender Dysphoria, Implied Sexual Content, Inspired by Richard Siken, Internalized Homophobia, Internalized Transphobia (mild? i think?), M/M, Nonbinary Jake English, Nonbinary Roxy Lalonde - Mentioned, POV Second Person, Road Trips, Romanticism of Caliborn Homestuck but like briefly, Trans Dirk Strider, jake is gay, overuse of the word you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:14:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28141470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wiccaning/pseuds/wiccaning
Summary: We have not been given all the words necessary.We have not been given anything at all.We’ve been driving all night.We’ve been driving a long time.
Relationships: Jake English/Dirk Strider
Comments: 19
Kudos: 48





	the entire history of human desire takes about seventy minutes to tell (unfortunately, we don't have that kind of time)

_You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and he won’t tell you that he loves_

_you, but he loves you. And you feel like you’ve done something terrible._

—

The car goes down the highway at 120km an hour. The only light is the streetlights every few kilometres and the glow of the headlights on the road. You catch glimpses of him, face neutral. You can see the electric orange of his eyes, in the dim, yellow light of the lamps, for a few seconds, before you’re both in the dark again. 

It’s 2am. You don’t know how long you’ve been in the car for; all you know is he won’t let you drive. The radio was quiet now (you’d turned it off 2 hours? 20 minutes? time had slipped away hours ago) and the only sound is the wind pushing against the car. 

You can’t see much except trees beside the road, so you stare at him. White blond hair gelled and styled meticulously contrasts against dark, freckled skin. Dark roots are peaking through at his scalp; and sometimes the streetlight catches the silver of a set of lip rings, albeit briefly. There’s a large scar wrapping the length of his neck that stands out. It looks deep, and always seemed angry, as if who or what caused it was full of malice. It’s years old, there long before you met him; but you don’t know where it came from, or what hurt him enough to leave that deep of a scar, but leave him alive. You have theories, but they’re all too depressing to say, so you keep quiet. He doesn’t tell, you don’t ask. 

He taps his hands on the steering wheel sometimes, drumming his nails against the plastic, before he returns his hands to their positions at 9 and 3. It’s a sound you like, you think. 

It’s almost surreal. Driving down a highway with a boy you love, in the dead of night, the only sound is him and the wind. 

Not that you’d tell him this. Fuck, the idea of even saying ‘I love you’ to him takes the air from your lungs and makes your hands clam up; the mere thought makes your voicebox close, and it hurts to breathe. You’ve thought about it, but...

But. That’s what you don’t know. What holds you back, you’ve asked yourself. Maybe it’s the thought he won’t feel the same. Maybe it’s because you think he doesn’t love you, he _can’t_ love you, because you’re both boys, and boys don’t like other boys. Boys don’t love other boys. 

But you do. You love him. You love the weight of his hand in yours, the way his hair curls if not styled when wet. You like the taste of his chapstick, coconut vanilla, and you like the rare occasions where he smiles, the corner of his lips twisting up, taking his twin piercings in different directions. It’d look foreign on someone else, but on him it looks right. 

But. 

But there’s the glances people give you two in public. There's never any sort of affectionate displays between you two, not in public anyways; but it’s as if they can tell, those two are more than friends. They stare too long, eyes boring into the back of your head. A pit fills your stomach when they do, and you can’t help but feel like you’ve done something wrong. 

You haven’t, though. Maybe you stand a little close to him, or take his food too casually without asking, or the way he leans into you when you walk or steals your drink and drinks half of it in one sip. Maybe it’s those little things that give it away, that hey, those two guys are together, look at them, isn’t it weird? 

But it isn’t. It feels more right than anything you’ve ever done in your life, and you don’t want to live in another reality where you can’t. 

And yet, the ever present, nagging ‘but’ lingers. The what if’s, weighing you down like an anchor. The ‘what if’ that asks if he’d leave you if you weren’t a boy, not really, just an actor playing a very convincing one. But you’re not a girl, either. You’re in between and neither at the same time and the whole situation suffocates you, but to breathe you don’t think about it- you push it down, take the metaphorical pillow off and you breathe, if only for a few minutes. 

You shift back to the present, and the scene is the same as when you zoned out. It’s almost disorienting. Yellow lines on the road blur and disappear as fast as they appear. You lean your head against the window gently. Trees creep into the edge of your vision, branches like fingers poking at the side of your face. 

You pass another street lamp, and then the only light left is the glow of the headlights. All that’s left is you and him, and the vast expense of the road. You think about saying something, but you bite your tongue. Nothing feels right to say, anyways. What would you say to him right now? You honestly can’t think of anything to talk about. So the silence that’s sat like fog in the car for the whole ride continues, thick and stifling, but not enough to be completely unbearable. 

You’re honestly not sure where you two are going. It was a rash, impulsive decision, to go somewhere new. You’d suggested it, not really expecting to actually throw clothes into a backpack and into the back of the car for god knows how long. 

But it’s 3 am on the highway, and a blond boy with dark brown skin and freckles and a set of lip rings and a scar on his neck is driving you somewhere neither of you know the destination of. 

And yet the ever present ‘but’ and ‘what if’ lingers in your head. And you don’t know what to do with it, so you let it sit. You don’t actively think of it, not at first, but you don’t push it down. You let it exist, before it pulls you back into your own head. 

What if he doesn’t love you back, is the question pounding in your head, repeating over and over like a motto. 

But it’s lying. You know it is. There’s something about how he lingers for a moment before taking a drink from your hand, or the glances that last a little too long, before he catches you looking. you can feel it in your bones. He loves you, but god, he’d choke on his own breath before he’d tell you. 

And yet, a part of you worries. What if he doesn’t love you (he does) because you’re a boy (you’re not). What if he stops loving you when he learns that you’re not a boy. What if, what if, what if, what if, what if. The words repeat over and over until the letters jumble and they don’t mean anything anymore. 

But those things don’t matter on the road. All that matters is you and him, the headlights and the highway. All that matters is you love him and he loves you. You decide to worry about everything else- you and him and love and gender- another time. 

His hand on yours gently, quietly, brings you back to the present, and a slow warmth fills your veins and envelopes your ribcage, and anxiety and fears fade away, just for a few minutes. but it’s enough. 

——

_You’re in a car with a beautiful boy, and you’re trying not to tell him that you love him, and you’re trying to choke down the feeling, and you’re trembling, but he reaches over and he touches you, like a prayer for which no words exist, and you feel your heart taking root in your body, like you’ve discovered something you don’t even have a name for._

——

_Heavy boots on my throat, I need_

_I need something soon_

_I need something soon_

——

The speedometer drifts gently between 120 and 125, as your foot eases up and down on the gas. You’ve been driving for 8 1/2 hours, and your leg is starting to cramp, just a little, but you don’t care, really. Driving puts you in a trance almost, but you don’t complain. 

Until the trace wears off and you’re stuck in your head again. If you could detach your head from your shoulders you would, but you can’t, you’ve tried. So you focus on the road as best you can. 

A few minutes later you feel his eyes on you, studying you in the dim light. You feel a tinge of annoyance, but you don’t stop him. You just don’t understand why he would choose to look at you. But you keep your mouth shut, look at the road and think. 

You think about him. You think about jet black hair that’s never really been brushed and forest green eyes that stand out against brown skin and rectangular glasses that magnify his eyes three times over. You think about a buck toothed smile pointed at you nervously. You think about the strong grip he has when you two hold hands. You try not to think about the skip in your heart when he leans on your shoulder when he’s tired; or the way his eyes light up when he’s excited. 

You think about how he’d leave you if he knew. You think about the love in his eyes when you catch him looking, before you lock eyes and both look away; it’d fade away if he knew.

You wonder if he knows, and that’s why he stares. He stares because he’s looking for signs, for the crack of your voice when you talk, or the twin scars on your chest that have faded over time; or if he sees the way your hips are just a little bit wider than they should be. 

It's like the way people's eyes bore into your skull in the mall, wondering what is wrong with the boy with the scarred neck and the pointed sunglasses indoors and why is he five foot three, and why does he stand so close to the dark haired boy in a little too short shorts and hiking boots. They know something is off about you, that hey, maybe that boy didn’t always know; maybe he’s a weirdo, maybe he’s a freak. 

You think about the girls you tried to love before, the ones you did love, but not the way you love him. You think about how it feels conflicting, to be told for so long that you couldn’t love him if you were a boy; but how right the two of you feel together. How that thought was the only one that ran through your mind the night after you kissed him for the first time. 

It comes to mind every now and again. The idea that to be a boy, a man, you have to like girls and be tall and strong and there are so many expectations you’re drowning in them, but you keep up as best you can. 

But it’s stifling, these expectations and they linger. They linger in the car, and the apartment you share with him, and in the street when your hands brush against one another’s, but neither of you take the others. But you know he feels them too, this invisible weight of unspoken expectations, and it helps, just barely. 

He’s not looking at you anymore, but you know he’s thinking about you, like you are him. 

You think about the girls you dated before, trying, clinging to the hope that you were not who you are. But you’re sitting in a car at 2:46 am in a car on a highway with a boy who you’ve loved since the day you saw him for the first time. 

You cling to the hope he feels the same. You want him to feel the same. But you doubt he would. No one sane would love you, especially not boys with deep green eyes and dark brown skin and an affinity for shitty movies and comic books. You don’t deserve him. You don’t deserve his love, and the days are numbered before he leaves you alone in the apartment, with a keyboard, some spare parts, and a shattered heart. 

You catch a glimpse of a smile in the light of the street before he’s plunged into darkness again. it shuts your mind down, for a few minutes and you’re grateful. When your brain kickstarts again, you take one hand off the steering wheel and place it over his resting in the middle console. 

You don’t stop unless you’re turning, and you don’t break apart until you pull into a convenience store an hour later. You fill the car with gas, before going in. The man behind the counter looks tired. He curtly nods at you, as you trail behind Jake, who’s staring at the drinks. 

You sidle next to him, and something possesses you to take his hand. He tenses for a second, but he doesn’t pull away. 

You’re still holding hands as you pay for the gas and the waters. The cashier looks at you for a little too long, but he doesn’t say anything, just tells you the total and asks if you want your receipt. 

You’re still holding his hand when you leave the gas station, and he gives you another nervous smile. You give him half of one back, before you two return to the car and continue driving to a mystery destination. 

The car feels safer, and you hold his hand like it’s a lifeline. He squeezes your hand reassuringly, and you think maybe, just maybe, your head is a liar. He loves you and you love him. You know he knows. But the thought of saying it chokes you, deflates your lungs like a flat tire, so you stay quiet, hand entwined with his. One day you’ll say it, you decide. You just don’t know when. 

It doesn’t matter when though. You’re here with him and he’s here with you and it’s all you need. 

——

_You just wanted to prove there was one safe place, just one_

_safe place where you could love him. You have not found that place yet._

_You have not made that place yet. You are here. You are here. You’re still right here._

_\--_

_You know how to ride a dirt bike, and you know how to do_

_long division,_

_and you know that a boy who likes boys is a dead boy, unless_

_he keeps his mouth shut_

\----

You are 16 years old and you’re staring at the boy from math with a buzzcut and high cheekbones and too-sharp canines from behind pointed shades you aren’t technically allowed to wear inside but you do anyway, and no one tries to stop you anymore, because it’s useless. He’s rude and brash and angry and is always in trouble but you can’t look away no matter how hard you try. You finally do, and you push away any thoughts of this boy whose voice is like nails on a chalkboard and who you want to shut up by slamming him into the wall and kissing but you don’t want that. 

You’re a _guy_ and guys don’t like other guys. You don’t care if other guys are gay, but you can’t be. 

By the end of high school, you’ve dated 2 girls and kissed a few more and you think something is broken in you, because the only people you want to kiss are boys. 

You push it down, bury it 6 feet under. They won’t think of you as a real man if you like other men, so you lock the idea up and toss the key into the ocean.

The idea remains underwater until you’re 26 and a friend introduces you to a boy with messy black hair, dark skin, a pair of square glasses and a buck toothed grin that’s almost contagious. You stumble when you introduce yourself, but he just grins again and says his name is Jake. 

You kiss him 8 ½ months later on New Years Eve in a shitty bar while your other friends are somewhere else- you got separated a half hour ago but neither of you went looking, and you don’t think they’re looking for you, either- and he kisses back, unintentionally rough, and it’s the first time you’ve ever enjoyed kissing someone in your life. 

But you lie awake that night and wonder why something that’s supposed to be taboo is what feels so right. You don’t fall asleep until 6am, and he brings you a coffee at 1 the next afternoon.

You mutter a thanks, and take it from him. The two of you sit on your bed in silence, sipping coffee quietly. He taps his fingers across his knees, before he clears his throat. 

You know what he’s going to ask. You know what’s coming and every muscle in your body is pulled taut. 

But the question you’re expecting never comes. “Did you have fun last night?” he starts. You just nod. You two sit in silence for a while, before you bite the bullet and apologize.

“Sorry, by the way. About last night.” Your throat tastes bitter, and you don’t think it’s the coffee. 

But he just blinks at you, like you’ve said something he doesn’t understand. “Why?”

You’re taken aback. Your brain tries and fails to come up with an answer as he speaks again. “What are you apologizing for?” 

“Kissing you,” you spit out bitterly, as if you’ve bitten into a lemon. 

“I’m not.” He says, taking a sip of his coffee. That’s… almost a shock to you. Your brain feels like mush.

“I quite enjoyed it, actually.” He states. His next words are more nervous. “Would you like to do that again, maybe?” He’s almost timid, shaking his hand like he’s touched something sticky. It throws you for a loop, and you can’t think of anything to say. You nod numbly. 

He shuffles closer to you, and he’s looking at you for a little longer than comfortable, eyes bordering on an unnatural green. _Green eyes flecked with yellow, dried leaves on the surface of a pool,_ something you saw once said. He places his hands on the sides of your face gently, and he kisses you again, and you think you could love this boy with all your heart. 

And now it’s six months later on the highway, and you’re holding his hand like it's the only thing tethering you to reality. 

The year and a half was rocky, at first. You’ve kept everyone at an arm's length your whole life, and you suspect he deals with things by shoving them inside a locker and keeping it shut. You suspect the locker will burst one day, but it’s holding strong as of now. It took a few uncomfortable conversations to smooth the road over. There’s still some bumps, but it’s been an alright ride since.

But there’s still the sense that you’re both hiding things, and neither of you have brought this up. You know what you haven't told him, but you don’t know what sort of thing he’s keeping in.

He tells you to pull into a parking lot when you hit a bigger city, that you need to sleep. You mutter something about being fine, but you can feel sleep weighing on your eyelids. So you sigh and pull into a parking lot. 

He flips down the car seats and puts sheets over the windows, while you lie pillows down on the scratchy carpet of the car. He crawls in the car as you lay blankets down. He's got his backpack slung over a shoulder, and he’s yawning. You turn away as he puts his pyjamas on, even though you’re not sure why. You collapse onto the pillow a minute later, and he holds you just a little tighter than normal as you drift off to sleep.

A few days later you’re preparing to leave another lot when he asks to talk about something, and your breath catches and dies in your throat. He’s seen through it all, he knows how shitty of a person you are, he _knows,_ and he wants to break up. But you tell him yes anyways. 

He doesn’t make eye contact as he starts talking, a little too fast, and very clearly avoiding what he actually wants to talk about. So you take off your shades and wait, while he talks in metaphors about having played a very convincing man for a long time but the role doesn’t feel right anymore, how it never did, and you let out an internal breath you didn’t know you’d been holding. You let him finish talking, before you force yourself to talk.

You force yourself to tell him about growing up and how everytime you did things like skateboard and getting into fights with the neighborhood boys were cute until you suddenly, you were 15 and you couldn't do that anymore, you were a girl, it was time to act like it; but the idea of being a girl only ever felt like a prison that you couldn’t live in. You watch him as you talk about growing up and how there never felt like there was any feasible life for you, not as _her_. You’re nauseated by the time you’ve finished, and you’ve clenched your fists to stop them shaking.

But he gently takes your hand and he gives you a smile and the fear twisting in your gut subsides, for a minute, anyways. He doesn’t ask any rude questions or about things you don’t want to talk about. Instead he thanks you for telling him, and hesitantly asks if you still want to be with him, even with everything he’s just told you, and you tell him yes. 

You don’t know how to feel. You ask if he’s mad at you for not saying anything, but he shakes his head and kisses you. It's different this time, more heat, more raw passion behind it, but you kiss back the same way, and you think that you do love this person with your whole heart.

\---

_And the boy who loves you the wrong way is filthy._

_And the boy who loves you the wrong way keeps weakening._

_\--_

_The blond boy in the red trunks is holding your head underwater_

_because he is trying to kill you,_

_and you deserve it, you do, and you know this,_

_and you are ready to die in this swimming pool_

_because you wanted to touch his hands and lips and this means_

_your life is over anyway._

_-_

You are 12 years old when a boy with blonde hair and brown eyes sneers at you and pushes you aside, leaving you wondering what the hell you did. But before you can ask, he speaks. He asks you, what are you, some sort of fag? And you don’t know what that means, but you know it’s not a good thing, so you stutter out a no. You can tell he doesn’t believe you, but you don’t think you believe it, either.

You don’t look it up, out of some fear maybe he’s right, that whatever this word means, you are. But you ask your sister a few days later, and she tells you it's a cruel word used by people with hate in their souls to make fun of men who like other men. Something _clicks_ in your head, and you don’t know why you feel guilty. She stares at you, concerned, behind large round glasses, and asks why. You lie and tell her you overheard someone say it at school, before changing the subject.

You’re 15 when you realize you don’t like girls and you panic. It keeps you up at night, and it makes you feel like there’s no air in your lungs. Some nights it feels like there’s nothing but guilt flowing through your veins. Your sister asks what’s wrong after a few days and you doge her question. She furrows her brows in concern but she leaves you alone.

You date a girl for the rest of high school but it never feels right. She’s nice, and she’s always sort of liked you but not the way you like her. You tell her sheepishly in the end of your first year of college that you’re gay, and you’re sorry for leading her on like you did. She looks at you with tears in her eyes, but she gives you a hug and thanks you for telling her.

You’ve been graduated for a few years when she introduces you to someone with pink eyes, curly hair, and a pair of heart-shaped sunglasses. They stand tall next to a boy with an angry scar across his neck and a pair of sharp, triangular sunglasses on his nose. The four of you become almost inseparable.

You’ve known the pair for 8 ½ months when it's just you and him in a shitty leather booth of a seedy bar and he kisses you when the ball drops. You remember the taste of metal from running your tongue along his lip rings and the feeling of his hands on your face, and you have a hard time falling asleep that night.

You nervously bring him a coffee the next day, and he apologizes bitterly, but you reassure him it’s okay and the two of you enter a nervous relationship.

It’s rocky at first. You will go for days without hearing from him, as he gets lost in a trance, working on robots and things you can’t wrap your head around. Other times, he spends so much time with you it’s _stifling_ and you don’t know how to react other than to pull away. This pattern goes on for a few months and you both dance around the issues until it’s been a week and you can’t get a hold of him. You tell him about your concern when you can finally talk to him. He listens as you explain that it’s not healthy and you worry about him, and does he even want to make this work? 

He tells you that’s a shitty thing to say, because he _does_ want to make this work, goddamnit, and he’s right. You both apologize and try to do better, and you work on _communicating_ from then on, even if trying to get him to talk about himself is like trying to pry open a locked, rusted, safe. You want to know what happened to make him so closed in, but you don’t ask. You suspect it’s just him. 

Now it’s been three days since a cashier looked at the two of you funny in the middle of the night, and the two of you are driving and you are unfortunately, thinking. You are thinking about gender. You _don’t_ want to be thinking about it, but every time you force your brain to switch gears, it switches it back, gears grinding to a halt. 

So with a mental sigh, you take a seat inside your head, legs crossed and begin the slow, incredibly painful process of consulting reality. 

You spend the next however long it takes to get to the closest gas station (2 hours? 30 minutes?) going through the versions of yourself you present to everyone, the you they want you to be, and how they differ from who you interpret yourself. This falls flat quickly, as you realize you _aren’t_ sure who you interpret yourself to be. You’ve fit into the moulds people have wanted to fit for so long, you haven’t had a chance to form your own. You don’t know if that’s comforting or unsettling. 

You redirect from your spiral about personal identity and shove that into a locker for another day, ignoring that gender almost definitely plays into it in some way. 

Back on the topic at hand, you sit and think about how you would be more comfortable being perceived as. You get over the initial hump of not actually wanting to be perceived before you realize you don’t really _care_ if someone thinks of you as male or female. 

Though that’s not entirely true. You don’t like being perceived at all. You realize that this ties into what you’d shoved into the locker previously and decide to shove it into the locker as well, to deal with or not deal with later.

You shift gears away from the locker, and think about a word a friend told you once. You don’t remember what it is, but you remember the way that they explained it. “Someone who falls outside of the normal gender binary”, you think they said. You aren’t sure what it really means, but you like how it sounds. 

You spend a few hours doing some research and feel a little better about yourself, gender wise, but your thoughts drift to the boy with the pointed sunglasses in the driver's seat and you start to panic. You don’t know how he’s going to react. He’s always had an unwavering masculine presence. Will he stop loving you if you tell him? 

You debate not telling him for a while, but decide that’s not a good idea. Tentatively, you tell him you want to talk, and his jaw tightens, but he sits and listens as you tell him what you’ve thought about for the past few days. Something in him seems to settle, but his jaw is clenched as he tells you about how he grew up, and how, for him, being perceived as a girl he never was was like a death sentence. Hearing this puts one more piece into the puzzle that is Dirk Strider, you think. The puzzle isn’t complete-you don’t know if it ever will be- but it explains some of his behaviors, a little. 

You thank him for telling you, and tentatively ask if he still wants to date you. He tells you yes. Something lifts off your chest, and you grab him, a little roughly, and kiss him. His hands needle through your hair, and you suddenly feel a lot more grateful that the lot he picked was particularly empty. 

-

_Tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us._

_These, our bodies, possessed by light._

_Tell me we’ll never get used to it._

-

_The way you slam your body into mine reminds me_

_I'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling,_

-

He’s got his teeth on your neck and you’ve got a hand up his shirt. His hands start creeping towards your belt and something claws at you. You pull away sharply, and he furrows his brows in concern. He pushes himself up as you pull your hands out from his shirt quickly. You mumble a quick sorry. His breathing slows down as he shifts a little closer. He asks what’s happening. 

You tell him you’re not sure. It feels like something is trying to claw its way up your throat. Your chest feels heavy and you wish you were 15 and 5’6 and lanky again. But you’re not. You’re 21, 6’3, and you’ve filled out since then. You don’t think you’ve ever been comfortable with it. But you don’t know why it decided to manifest itself here, now.

You shrink into yourself. He puts a hand on your shoulder, but it’s almost awkward, as if he doesn’t know what to do in this scenario. He says nothing, and you know it’s because he doesn’t know what to say. He asks you what’s wrong. You tell him you don’t know. You can tell he doesn’t buy it. But he doesn’t push, not this time. He replaces his hand with his head on your shoulder. The backseat of the car is quiet. You two sit there, in the silence that only exists in this car, and he asks if you want to lie down. 

You do, but your mouth-brain connection isn’t working, so you just nod. He lifts his head up, and moves, allowing you to curl up on the slightly scratchy carpeting. The bedding you two brought along was shoved aside, and neither of you have grabbed it. He lies down next to you, and you pull him closer. He tells you, faintly, that he gets it. And he does- not the same way you do, but enough that he knows what you’re feeling -the uncanny sensation that something about you should be different, but isn't. You don’t ask how he knows, but you don’t care. 

The two of you drift off to sleep, for an unknown amount of time. You wake up and it’s dark, and your body hurts from sleeping in such a weird position. He’s yawning, but he rubs his eyes and looks at you.   
  
“Jake,” he says, “let's go home.”

You think about telling him anywhere with him is home, but you decide that’s a conversation for another time. So you say okay, and the two of you set out back home.

And then it’s 2:37 in the morning again, and you’re driving down a highway with the boy you love, in the dead of night, the only sound is him humming softly along to the indie music playing quietly on the radio and the wind blowing against the car.

You tell him, quietly, that you love him. He stops for a second, and looks at you before he tells you, quietly that he loves you too, and the atmosphere feels lighter, like someone’s opened the curtains for the first time in a very long time. You think you’ve found a place where you can love him, untouched by the outside world, and it’s here, on the highway in the middle of the night. You think you’re okay with that. 

**Author's Note:**

> title is from litany in which certain things are crossed out, everything in here is a reference to poems from siken's book crush, except for the little thing above the second section, which is from car seat headrests song something soon. this has been in the works for a while now,, i started it in august i think, but bc i was busy i didnt have a chance to finish it till now. its v different from what i normally write but. also, special shoutout to ev and terezi for beta-ing! n e ways i can be found on twitter @ transstriders and tumblr @ transminimoffs !!


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